2 Mark

Furtwangen is a small town in the Black Forest, best known historically as a center of clock-making. This 2 Mark Notgeld was issued in 1918 during the final collapse of the German Imperial war economy, when acute coin shortages — caused by hoarding and metal requisitioning — forced hundreds of municipalities to produce their own emergency paper in fractional and low denominations.

Stadtgemeinde issues like this one carried purely local authority. They were accepted by local merchants out of necessity, not legal obligation, and most were withdrawn and redeemed within months of issue — which makes surviving circulated examples more representative of genuine use than the deliberately collectible Notgeld printed for the philatelic market in 1920–21.